How To Make A Brand Documentary

What Is A Video Documentary

  • A non-fiction movie that in some way “documents” or captures reality.
  • Often used to reveal an unusual, interesting, or unknown angle.
  • Typically 30-minutes to 2 hours in length.

How To Create A Documentary For Your Business

1. Select your interviewees

  • Select five or six people who are as diverse in as many ways possible.
  • You can choose to have your employees interviewed or your customers.

2. Talk to your interviewees

  • Talk to your interviewees and get their story directly.
  • Keep in mind that it’s their point of view you’re after.

3. Organize your potential story

  • Once your interviews are completed, transcribe them and put them in a binder.
  • Highlight and arrange your best sound bites easily and quickly.

4. Determine your intentions through a script

  • After arranging your potential story, copy and paste these quotes into a new document.
  • This will become your working script.

5. Get supporting footage

  • What will your audience see while the story is being told?
  • Imagine the footage you want to be captured in the appropriate areas of the script.
  • Write it down.

6. Capture engaging videos

  • Put visuals to your script.
  • Capture compelling footage that expresses and compliments your narrative.

7. Shape your story in editing

  • Use music and all the visual tools available into an emotional narrative.
  • Make it relevant to your intentions

Process of Creating A Company’s Documentary

Pre-production

  • Ask yourself, “What’s the goal?”
  • Think of the footages and scenes you want to capture
  • Plan your script
  • Assess your brand story

Gather your equipment

  • Cameras
  • Lenses
  • Microphones
  • Monopod
  • Headphones
  • SD cards
  • Portable hard drive
  • Extra batteries

Focus on the story

  • Make sure that the story you’re looking to tell is in a place for more than you need to use flashy equipment.

Collect a variety of shots

Have as many options as you can have
Chose from:

-Talking Head: Someone speaking to the camera.
-Vlog: An informal shot of a narrator speaking into a camera that they either set up or are holding.
-A-Roll: Your best footage, often of interviews, which narrate the central theme.
-B-Roll: Contextual footage for transitions, or to cut to while people are speaking.

Or add:

  • Animations
  • Text Overlays

Organize your footages

  • Each night, offload your footage and organize it

Assemble everything in post-production

  • Re-read your pre-production goals
  • Conduct the first edit
  • Conduct a second edit
  • And a third
  • Add transitions and animated chapter titles
  • End on a note
  • Build a trailer

Share and promote your documentary

  • Use different channels to share your video.